Tag Archives: folklore

Work in progress. The pagan-originated spring equinox folk custom of Poland called The Drowning of Marzanna. Marzanna is the Polish incarnation of the old Slavic goddess of winter, plague and death. The effigy is built of straw and dressed in clothes, ribbons, and flowers. Marzanna is taken to the nearest riverbank and thrown to her watery grave as the children sing: As the spring sun rises in the sky of blue, in this swollen river we are drowning you.

At the end of the year, I will be ending this blog. Followers of my work will be able to see my works in progress on Instagram instead! I just can’t keep so many sites going. I’d rather be painting. @mygoodbabushka

A Pale Rider. By Julie Kwiatkowski Schuler. The last person to be buried in a churchyard each year is called the Ankon, who becomes death itself. He rides through town in the form of a skeleton and is a portent of death. – Folk Lore of Brittany

Work in progress. The last person to be buried in a churchyard each year is called the Ankon, who becomes death itself. He rides through town in the form of a skeleton and is a portent of death. – Folk Lore of Brittany

The last person to be buried in a churchyard each year is called the Ankon, who becomes death itself. He rides through town in the form of a skeleton and is a portent of death. – Folk Lore of Brittany
Work in progress today.

I was thinking about how my eye exam looked, to me, and also of an African folk tale about the Conceited Spider. He took out a needle and thread and sewed up his eye. He went to the Tiger and said, “Can you not see? My eye is sewn up and now I can see such wonderful things that I must sing about them.”
“Sew up my eyes!” said the Tiger, “then I too can see these surprising sights.”
And so the clever Spider had tricked the Tiger.
We Sewed Up Our Eyes and Saw Such Wonderful Things. Work in progress today.

“I have known the shooting of a star spoiling a night’s rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought.” Addison, Omens

Merrythought n. the fureula or wishbone of a fowl’s breast; so called from the sport of breaking it between two persons of whom each pulls at one of the two ends, to determine which is to be married first, or which is to have a wish gratified that has been mentally formed for the occasion, the winner being the one who gets the longer fragment. – from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia 1899

Original painting 8″ x 10″ acrylic on acid free paper. Sylvester is inspired by the story of St. Sylvester subduing a dragon by binding it’s mouth shut. Here is the fable re-imagined with a boy in a natural history museum with a Komodo Dragon. The mouth of the dragon is bound shut with white ribbon. There is a Komodo Dragon skeleton in the display case behind him. The clock indicates it is close to midnight because St. Sylvester’s Day is December 31, and on St. Sylvester’s Night, between 12 and 1, it was believed that all water would turn to wine.
At My Good Babushka .